A green movement of all stripes

In Appalachia, greens are banding together with the Tennessee Conservative Union to oppose mountaintop mining. In Georgia, the Sierra Club and Atlanta’s tea party have formed a Green Tea Coalition that is demanding a bigger role for solar power in the state’s energy market. Elsewhere, veterans of the George W. Bush administration are working with the Environmental Defense Fund on market-based ideas for protecting endangered species.

It’s not yet a broad national trend, and may not be enough to begin dampening Washington’s bitter left-right split over President Barack Obama’s environmental policies. But some activists — particularly outside the Beltway — see potential for the kinds of coalitions that used to get big things done, back in the days when Theodore Roosevelt was creating national parks and George H.W. Bush’s administration was taking on acid rain.

“I do think there’s a big schism there, but there are some things we can all agree on,” said Lloyd Daugherty, chairman of the Tennessee Conservative Union.

Daugherty’s group — and its roughly 15,000 members — joined an effort with environmentalists last spring against mountaintop mining. While Daugherty and his organization had long privately objected to the mining because of its effect on property rights, hunting and fishing, he decided to fight publicly after a Chinese company bought mineral rights in Tennessee.

“We’re proud that Tennessee is a red state. But just how red are we willing to go?” asked a 30-second ad that Daugherty’s group ran, which shows Tennessee’s state flag morphing into the Chinese flag.

The ad was put together by Shelby White, a senior campaigner at Catapult, an environmental strategy firm that looks to build unusual coalitions on issues like climate change and logging.

“We’re looking to find more of those issues that can bring conservatives, businesses and other unusual bedfellows together,” said Glenn Hurowitz, a senior member of Catapult and a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. Catapult has also recruited rock stars like Mick Jagger to combat guitars made from illegally logged wood and elite frequent fliers to lobby United Airlines to reduce pollution.

Catapult is an offshoot of Climate Advisers, a consulting shop founded by Nigel Purvis, a former senior climate adviser to President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and a Clinton administration climate diplomat.

Conservatives and eco-activists have mainly been at odds for the past decade or so. Daugherty and some environmentalists blame that on a newer generation of Republicans who have allowed a drive for limited government to overshadow everything else.

“Most of them now are influenced by talk shows,” said Daugherty, a radio talk show host himself and former Southern field director for Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign. “It’s become too easy for conservatives to label anybody who cares about conservation as tree huggers.”

But fault can lay in the other direction too, the Environmental Defense Fund’s Tony Kreindler acknowledged.

“For so long, conservatives and Republicans in particular when they do the right thing for the environment, they rarely get the credit they deserve and are often dismissed by the environmental community,” he said.

EDF’s political arm — the Environmental Defense Action Fund — is in the early stages of an effort to give possible direct donations, independent expenditures and other help for Republicans vying for safe red seats in 2014 who could be future partners.

“This is not about taking out the bad guys. This is about helping the good guys and creating a deeper bench of environmental champions in both parties,” Kreindler said. “We’re going to be actively engaged in this electoral cycle building allies with conservatives in the Republican Party.”

It’s a part of a larger effort by EDF to foster a new agenda with the help of conservatives. EDF and some George W. Bush administration environmental officials, led by former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, co-formed the Conservation Leadership Council “to find environmental solutions that are based on conservative principles of freedom, liberty and choice,” Kreindler said. The result so far has been several roundtable talks and a dozen policy papers advocating market-based ways to update the Endangered Species Act and address issues like clean energy financing.

Conservatives like Daugherty are more influenced by the likes of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan than upstart tea partiers like Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.